Copyright cops sail to aid of East London creatives

THE MANY media professionals, photographers, writers, designers and others who create products will be pleased that a police unit has been formed specifically to target intellectual property theft.

The team will investigate online piracy and other intellectual property crime. This will ensure, according to Intellectual Property Minister Lord Younger and City of London Police Commissioner Adrian Leppard, that the UK stays at the forefront of intellectual property enforcement.

The Intellectual Property Office will provide funding of £2.5 million over two years to the City of London Police, which is the national lead force for fraud, to establish and run the unit, which is due to come into operation next month September 2013.

“The establishment of a new online intellectual property crime unit is evidence of the Government and City of London Police commitment to confront this threat.

“Together we are creating an operationally independent police unit… In doing so, we will also be safeguarding jobs.”

Lord Younger said that the growing use of the internet made online intellectual property theft a worsening threat to creative industries, which “are worth more than £36 billion a year and employ more than 1.5 million people”.

Globally, it is projected that digitally pirated music, films and software will lead to losses of £50 billion-plus this year.

* Picture at top: like this canoeist on the Grand Union Canal near Broadway Market in Hackney, creatives when it comes to copyright disputes should ensure that they’re not up the creek without a paddle.

* The National Union of Journalists, the organisation for journalists in the UK and Eire, welcomes membership applications (especially their cheque) from publicists, graphic and web designers.

* Emboldened underscored words in most cases indicate a hyperlink, a reader service rare among websites. If a link does not work, it is probably because the site to which the URL refers has not been maintained.